Hello

mmmchikn

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 19, 2010
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Hello everyone. I've been playing Civilization for a little while (6 months or so) and was looking around this site when I came across the Dune mod. The Dune books are my favorites, so of course I had to download it (1.7.1).

I'm not particularly good at normal Civ, I'm decent and can win most of the time on Noble but I tried once on Prince and got worked. I've played through one entire game and am halfway through my second, and would like to share some observations (some of these may already be said/known, I've read some of the threads but if they're repeats oh well):

-I played as Mohiam, on Noble Arrakis Epic speed, I think everything was default. Standard map size. I founded Shai-Hulud, and beelined Mahdi and set the jihadists/bladesman on everyone. I eventually won a little past halfway through the game (not constantly at war) by diplomacy

-I used jihadists to take out Rabban, and didnt fight another war for a while, when I attacked eveyone in a nice line, until I got to kindjal fighters (ahead of everyone else) and upgraded my dudes to them.

-The reason I won is because of the Kwisatz Haderachs and Sayyadinas. In between the wars I set out a huge stack with 5 Sayyadinas and 2 Kwisatz dudes, and they accumulated so many promotions. Seriously, it was ridiculous, I had guys with like city raider 5, combat 5 , and blitz 5, stuff like that. Every attack was at 99-100% odds.

I think that the Sayyadinas are too powerful, as I was able to dominate the planet because of them. Maybe double the time it takes to do a promotion or something. Also, does stacking 5 of them make 5x the promotions? Maybe take away that if so, but not nerf the rate.

I also think that it is kind of weird to have a state religion when playing as the Bene Gesserit. In the books, they more manipulated the different religions (Missionaria Protectiva etc. Maybe that could be a special Bene Gesserit project or something, and they get cheap missioinaries w/o having to build a monastery/equivalent). They weren't really religious followers of a faith.

Also, the spice didn't seem to have a huge impact on the game, like it was nice to pick it up here and there, but seemed completely unnecessary to win. The two most important things about Arrakis are water and spice, and while water is extreemly important, spice didn't seem to be. Maybe it was just this game or something.

Just thought of this- what if you could harvest spice outside of your cultural borders, for 1 gold less or something? It would simulate more of what happens in the books, when they go actively looking for spice instead of just getting what is near them.

A couple last things, long post sorry.

I saw a lot of "stub text for _____ here", if wanted I could look for quotes or write some of the "Sid's tips" things to fill in there. (ps the Satellites tech has the quote from normal Civ in the Sids tips)

Also, random events would be pretty sweet. I have no idea how to actually program them, or if it is something unwanted, but I could come up with ideas, the prereqs for them, the events to choose from, stuff like that.

Finally, this is an awesome mod, thanks to everyone who has put in/is working on it now.
 
Hello everyone

Hi there! Welcome to the forums, thanks for joining up and sharing your thoughts. First impressions feedback are particularly useful.

I think that the Sayyadinas are too powerful, as I was able to dominate the planet because of them. Maybe double the time it takes to do a promotion or something. Also, does stacking 5 of them make 5x the promotions? Maybe take away that if so, but not nerf the rate.

This is very useful feedback. The Sayyadinas were nerfed in 1.7.1, but as you demonstrate the nerf has probably not been enough.

There probably needs to be some mix (NOT all) of:
1.
AHR92
One way to do this would be to have three "Weirding" promotions; weirding 1, 2, 3, and have these be the only promotions taught by the Sayyadina.
These could be some mix of strength and first strikes.
And then use these instead of giving Drill and combat promotions. This has the advantage of reducing the "maximum" level with which units can be trained using Sayyadinas and time alone.
Which the 1.7.1 change (promotion increases unit level) did not fix; it only reduces the value of combat experience (which IMO is undesirable), without capping
2. Have the Sayyadina unable to add promotions to units of more than level ~5.
3. Prevent multiple sayyadinas in the same stack from increasing the probability that a unit gets trained.
4. Reduce the national cap to maybe ~2.

I also think that it is kind of weird to have a state religion when playing as the Bene Gesserit. In the books, they more manipulated the different religions (Missionaria Protectiva etc. Maybe that could be a special Bene Gesserit project or something, and they get cheap missioinaries w/o having to build a monastery/equivalent). They weren't really religious followers of a faith.

My preferences is for a "Missionaria Protectiva" building at "Faith" tech, that gives +2 espionage points, and +1 happy per non-state religion present in the city (basically, cancels the unhappiness penalty). This encourages BG to get as many religions as possible without penalty, manipulating them all to their own end. And means that they don't really need to adopt a state religion formally either, which helps them diplomatically.
Also, the spice didn't seem to have a huge impact on the game, like it was nice to pick it up here and there, but seemed completely unnecessary to win. The two most important things about Arrakis are water and spice, and while water is extreemly important, spice didn't seem to be.

Spice is very powerful if you start using it, though the affects are not that apparent.
My suggestions for increasing spice value are:
1. Add a "spice silo" building that requires arrakis spice civic, is cheap to build (~40-50 hammers?), is destroyed if you leave arrakis spice civic, and gives +~0.15 gold per spice resource. (20 spice = +3 gold per city).
2. Revert to the system where having fresh water access prevent spice in that tile, but not in adjacent tiles. This would reduce the affect of wells in particular in driving away spice; so a tile adjacent to a well could not get spice, but a tile 2 distant *could*. Whereas atm you have to be 3 distant to be able to have spice.
Have the Reservoir of Liet create "3 radius" water (indirectly, since I know its a fudge currently) so that it provides lots of terraforming and still drives away lots of spice.
3. Add a +2 commerce from harvester improvement with some midgame tech.

Just thought of this- what if you could harvest spice outside of your cultural borders, for 1 gold less or something? It would simulate more of what happens in the books, when they go actively looking for spice instead of just getting what is near them.
This has been discussed many times before. Its a cool idea, but there are a lot of difficulties with it. In particular, the can't really handle it well, as the AI is not going to be able to intelligently contest areas outside cultural borders. As it is, all the AI does is contest cities, it doesn't even contest other areas well.
Making spice too powerful also has a tendency to favor the human player (who would understand the value of pillaging enemy harvesters while protecting their own) over the AI (who will not understand this) and thus can make the game too easy.

I saw a lot of "stub text for _____ here"
Point them out, its always good to know where these are.
We're also very open to suggestions for flavor text and tech text, there is a lot of writing work that still needs to be done.

Also, random events would be pretty sweet.
Ideas for random events would also be very welcome.
I think this is an area where there is huge scope for extra flavor.

Finally, this is an awesome mod, thanks to everyone who has put in/is working on it now.
Great! Glad you're enjoying, and thanks for the feedback.
 
I saw a lot of "stub text for _____ here", if wanted I could look for quotes or write some of the "Sid's tips" things to fill in there.

Thanks! Almost all the text is stubs, there is no reason to point out individual ones. But several people have volunteered to contribute these, and very little has come in. Please, while you are thinking of it, just type in some quotes or background text to the forum, and I will put it in.

ahriman said:
2. Have the Sayyadina unable to add promotions to units of more than level ~5.
3. Prevent multiple sayyadinas in the same stack from increasing the probability that a unit gets trained.

These are both good ideas, I will put them in.
 
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